


carve a palace from within

by undersea



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, P5R Spoilers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25318219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undersea/pseuds/undersea
Summary: The future rolls in like a storm, and Akira sets off after it. The past follows suit.(A reunion, years after the credits have stopped rolling.)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 24
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

“I can’t believe you’re leavin’ us,” Ryuji mumbles, all petulance, scuffing at the floor with his sneaker. “We only just got you back, and now you’re, like, sailin’ off into the sunset…”

“He’s been back for over a year, dumbass,” Futaba tells him, with an admirable amount of scorn for someone who’s spent the whole morning looking completely downtrodden. “And it’s only for six months! And then he’ll be back for good, right?”

“Right,” Akira says as she turns to him, fondness curving his mouth into a smile. The day he travels to Osaka has dawned unnaturally cold for an early Tokyo autumn, and as they stand on the train platform he braces his jacket around himself a little tighter. 

“Are you sure you’ve got everything you need?” Makoto asks worriedly, eyeing the duffel bag heaved over his shoulder. “I know it’s only six months, but still…”

“You should’ve seen what this guy brought with him to Tokyo the first time,” Morgana chirps, piping up as he pokes his head out of Akira’s bag. “Did you know he has more pairs of the same glasses than he does pants?”

“That’s not true,” Akira says, as Yusuke opines, “Minimalism is a noble lens through which to view the human experience… You are a man after my own heart, Akira.”

“I’m not sure being eternally broke and being a minimalist are the same thing,” Ann muses.

As the conversation devolves into an attack on Yusuke’s spending habits, Akira watches them silently, the same fond smile playing on his lips. Of course he’s known he’ll miss them, over the coming six months, but only in this moment does it sink in how strange his life will be without this familiar backdrop of affection-laced banter. Out of the corner of his eye he becomes aware of Haru watching him, a quiet smile on her face. “Are you nervous?” she asks, and he has to take a moment to think about it. 

“No?” he says, sounding vaguely unsure, and then laughs. “No, not really, just a little… you know.” He makes a vague gesture, and she giggles. 

“I understand,” she says, expression kind. He isn’t nervous, but there’s a natural amount of… uncertainty, he supposes, that comes with packing up your life (or, a duffel bag’s worth of your life) and moving somewhere new. _Sailing away,_ as Ryuji put it, even if it’s just for a few months.

“Ah,” Makoto says, over the din of the others’ bickering. They all stop to follow her gaze as the Nozomi shinkansen comes soaring round the corner.

“Nooo,” Futaba moans, seizing Akira’s arm and hiding her face in his shoulder, as if the train won’t exist if she can’t see it. “It’s too soon! Go back!”

“He’ll be back before you know it, Futaba-san,” Sumire says, gently prying at her grip. Futaba detaches herself from Akira and throws herself around Sumire instead, faux-crying into the crook of her neck. 

“I’m leaving too, you know!” Morgana interjects haughtily. “A little display of emotion on my part would be nice, too!”

“Are you ready?” Ann asks him (“Don’t ignore me!” Morgana yowls in the background). She steps back and surveys him, expression half-proud, half-sad, as if Akira is a child off to his first day of school. 

“I think so,” Akira says. Ryuji slings an arm around his shoulder and makes a very strange expression. “I’m gonna miss you, bro.”

“Why do you look so weird?”

“I’m trying to look supportive, man! Reassurin’ and shit!”

“You look constipated,” Futaba sniffs, removing her head from Sumire’s shoulder.

“Listen, you -”

“Have you got your ticket?” Makoto interjects, a little too loudly. “Do you know where your seat is?”

“I do,” Akira says, grinning at her worried hovering. “Don’t worry about me.”

“We’ll text you all the time,” Ann says, and points an accusatory finger in his face. “You better update us! No, “sorry, I was asleep” all the time!”

“I do like to sleep,” Akira says, then a laugh splits his face as she glares at him over a pout. “No, I’ll keep you posted, I promise,” he insists, gently tugging her in for a hug with one arm. 

“Group hug!” Futaba yells, throwing her arms around Akira’s chest as the others follow suit (“Ow, Yusuke, that’s my foot!” “Ann, your hair is tickling my nose…”). The thought of how they must look - a ragtag crowd, smushed together on the Tokyo station platform - warms Akira’s heart, and he closes his eyes, leaning into the warmth a little longer.

Eventually, their side of the platform becomes all but drained of people, with everyone having slowly trickled into the train carriages. Akira slowly emerges from their huddle, reflexively raising one hand to fiddle with his fringe.

“Time to go, huh,” Morgana says. Akira nods, shooting his friends a final grin before he turns to face the train. 

“Contact us as soon as you arrive in Osaka,” Yusuke tells him. 

“Send pics!” Futaba demands. 

Akira laughs an airy acknowledgement, stepping onto the carriage and turning to look at them over his shoulder. “I’ll be back soon,” he promises, eyes lingering for a few more seconds on their wobbling smiles before he turns away, the train door sliding shut behind him. 

* * *

He’s only been to Osaka once before - many, many summers ago, and the memory is blurry and distant - but the past few years spent navigating the labyrinth of the Tokyo rail system have bestowed a valuable set of skills upon him. The unfamiliar skyline slides past him as he sits on the Osaka loop line, knees jostling gently with a quiet anticipation. Akira is idly studying the ads plastered around the train carriage when his phone vibrates urgently in his pocket. 

[ **Ann:** are you there yet!! ]

Before he can even begin to type a response:

[ **Futaba:** no he’s still a few stops away

i think?

signals kinda sketchy ]

[ **Akira:** I thought you said you’d stopped GPS tracking my phone ]

[ **Futaba:** yeah i lied

have to keep an eye on you while youre out there in the wilderness of kansai

its a dangerous place ]

[ **Ryuji:** r u tracking our phones too?? ]

[ **Futaba:** no ryuji i don’t care where you go ]

[ **Sumire:** How are you doing, senpai? Did your transfers go alright? ]

Akira pauses to crack a smile at Sumire’s unwavering politeness, even after years have passed. 

[ **Akira:** yeah, it was actually pretty simple

Better than my first day at Shujin when I spent a small lifetime trying to find the Ginza line ]

[ **Haru:** Getting lost in Shibuya station is like a rite of passage for everyone who comes to Tokyo! ]

[ **Yusuke:** I once spent half an entire day searching for the Hachiko exit

It was a most enlightening experience. ]

[ **Ryuji:** bro didn’t you grow up here???? ]

“We will shortly be arriving at Tsuruhashi Station,” a voice announces, disturbing Akira from his half-typed reply. “Tsuruhashi Station.”

“This is it, right? Come on, get up, get up!” 

“Shh,” Akira mutters at Morgana, gently shoving his head back into his bag.

The apartment which he’ll be living in for the next six months is - well, it’s better than the attic. Not that he actually minded living in Leblanc, but at least this place has its own shower. Morgana leaps from his bag and promptly begins making himself at home, prowling over to inspect the modest furniture his new room has been blessed with. Akira flops down on his still-unfurled futon and snaps a lazy photo of Morgana sniffing at the thin layer of dust on the desk, sending it to the group chat with the caption ‘home sweet home i guess’.

His phone promptly begins to buzz with notifications, but Akira lets his arm fall to his side, the other coming up to cover his eyes. The journey here wasn’t particularly gruelling, or long - beyond the thin curtains of his room’s window he can see the sun still hanging radiant in the sky - but Akira suddenly finds himself overcome with exhaustion. He almost feels like he could fall asleep here, and it’s so easy to let his eyes flutter shut - 

“Hey!” Morgana leaps onto his stomach and Akira lets out a sharp, pained exhale. “What’re you getting all cozy for? Let’s go look around!”

“I’m tired,” Akira tells him, sounding vaguely winded.

“Come on! We’re gonna be living here for half a year, let’s go check it out!”

“By that logic, we’ve got plenty of time to go sightseeing,” he says, but he’s already begrudgingly getting to his feet. “Don’t I even get to unpack?” 

Morgana levels him with a withering look. Akira is constantly impressed by how he manages to make a feline face be so expressive. “Don’t pretend you weren’t going to just leave your luggage abandoned on the floor all night anyway.”

Akira shrugs on his jacket in lieu of responding.

The area around his apartment is nice, a series of pleasant tree-lined streets, autumn’s amber colours beginning to permeate the scenery. He scopes out the nearest convenience store and tosses a couple hundred yen on a bottle of soda, and - unable to resist Morgana’s doleful gaze - a pack of sushi. 

“This place is pretty decent,, huh,” Morgana remarks, although Akira thinks the cheerfulness to his tone is 90% due to the tuna he just inhaled. 

“It’s not bad,” Akira agrees, taking a swig of his drink. They’ve wandered their way into a park where Akira rests back on a bench, watching the sunlight filter through the swaying trees overhead. 

“I think I prefer Tokyo, though,” Morgana says, and Akira makes a noncommittal sound in response. His hand drifts to gently scratch between Morgana’s ears as his gaze skims the Osaka skyline. The sounds of the city roll past in the distance - countless people milling in and out of their everyday lives, each of them following a path Akira will never know, and a thought flowers hopelessly, desperately in his heart: _are you here?_

* * *

The thing is - ostensibly, Akira has moved on. 

There is an odd solace in the cruelty of the seasons’ advance; he had left Tokyo as the winter ended, and as he watched the cherry blossoms bloom from the safe monotony of his hometown, so too had something taken root in his own heart - a sharp, quiet dawning, a realisation: _ah, things are moving forward._

The days folded into each other and Akira had gone with them, let himself be rolled from one month to the next. Summer came in and he found himself pulled back to Tokyo, a tide at the mercy of the moon. His friends’ smiles had been lunar bright as he emerged back into his only real home, having followed his summons (in the form of a group chat delicately titled _PHANTOM THIEVES BEACH REUNION BONANZA ☀️🌊🏖🎉 no lobsters inari 🚫🦞🚫)_ all the way to the sun-kissed sands of Miura. 

“We’ve missed you terribly,” Haru had told him. It’d only been a couple of months, and of course he’d seen all of them over video calls and photographs, but her hair had seemed inexplicably so much longer to him then, its gentle waves cast into a beautiful amber glow by the slow sinking of the sun. In the background, he could hear Futaba saying, “okay, look - no buying _any_ sea life! No buying, no - capturing, no adopting!”

“I fail to understand why you are so staunchly against me saving such elegant creatures from the fate of livestock.”

“‘Cause when your stupid lobsters died last year you moped about it for, like, three weeks!”

Yusuke sniffed. “Ah, the cruel brevity of our time together… I suppose, as the cherry blossoms of spring are all the more beautiful for their transience, so too was the culmination of our fate…”

“Okay, Murasaki Shikibu,” Futaba had said, her voice an audible eyeroll, as Ryuji chimed in, “Ain’t lobsters meant to be, like, immortal?”

Akira’s heart had swollen with love. “I missed you all too,” he said to Haru, smile so wide and genuine he could’ve burst, the fatigue of the last few lonely months washing away in their presence. Ann punctuated the end of the day with a casual, “let’s go to Okinawa next year,” and this statement wrapped around him like a blanket. _Next year._ It was that nebulous, beautiful promise that had carried him through his final year of school, through graduation, through the final journey back to Tokyo. 

And now he is here - away again, but for only a brief stretch of time, and on the other side of it the concrete promise of returning to the warm place of belonging he had carved for himself. His future beginning to form, its shape vibrating with potential. The world no longer needing to be saved. Nothing is missing. 

Except: some nights. Most nights. Not every night, but a lot of nights - when he begins to drift off into the comfort of sleep - his mind squeezes around one last coherent thought. Always the same. Akira keeps the glove in his bag, no matter where he goes, never allows himself to forget the one tangible piece of evidence he has left that someone was here, and they existed. Could exist still, against all odds. 

Because a wish can be a memory, and a memory can be a wish. 

* * *

“Takoyaki, takoyaki,” Mona whispers at him, insistently, as though Akira’s managed to forget in the last three minutes.

“I _know,_ ” Akira insists. “We’ll get there, I promise.” It’s his last day of freedom before he has to go and be a human being tomorrow, and he is - mostly at Morgana’s insistence - spending it navigating the throngs of people crowding Dotonbori. 

“You’ve had takoyaki plenty of times,” he mutters as he slips down a side alley. “What’s the big deal?”

“It’s _Osaka_ ,” Morgana says haughtily. “You can’t put Osaka takoyaki on the same level as the rest of it!” 

Akira thinks he’s talking with a lot of confidence for someone who’s never even had it before, but he keeps that thought to himself. He thumbs through the map on his phone, gracefully dodging a gaggle of tourists as he does so. “Is this the right way?” he mumbles to himself, idly. 

“My _takoyaki!_ ”

Mercifully, he finds the takoyaki place in a few minutes, and after he purchases it they stand in a quiet side street a couple blocks away, Akira leaning against the wall as Morgana paces excitedly around his feet. “You better enjoy this, for what it cost,” Akira warns him before biting into his own share. The insides flood his mouth with a blistering heat. “ _Ow, fuck -”_

“Idiot,” Morgana says reproachfully, and promptly does the same thing. 

It’s as Akira’s scouting out a nearby convenience store, desperate for something to help soothe his scalded tongue, that Morgana comes to a verdict. “I have to say,” he begins ceremoniously, “that tasted the same as every other takoyaki I’ve ever had.”

“You are kidding me,” Akira says, as he approaches the sliding doors of the Lawson. “I burnt my tongue for you.”

“That was nothing to do with me! It’s not my fault you never learned any self restraint!”

Akira had a witty retort ready, possibly, at some point. But the doors slide open seconds before he makes it to them, and all the words on his tongue, in his brain, die. The entire world fizzles out of existence and then restarts again instantaneously. Akira is reborn on the corner of an Osaka street in autumn and the first thing he ever sees is Goro Akechi, emerging from a Lawson convenience store, eyes widening in slow motion as his gaze comes up to meet Akira’s. 

Somewhere far, far away, the cashier calls, “Thank you very much!”

“Ah,” Akechi says. “God fucking damn it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MIGHTY bold of me to attempt a multi chapter fic when my entire writing life is like *writes one shitty oneshot* *promptly fucks off for at least a year*
> 
> i love shuake so much idk what im doing i have a very low iq and they are living in my (very empty) brain rent free. someone do something. my twitter is @zelos if you want to counsel me through the epic shuake brainworms


	2. Chapter 2

See, this scenario has played out in Akira’s head a hundred times. Normally, Akechi shows up at his door (actually, most of the time it’s at Leblanc, even though he doesn’t live there anymore, but Akira just goes with it), usually in the dead of night. A lot of the time it’s raining, because Akira won’t shy away from admitting he’s a sucker for the dramatics. He doesn’t look particularly different, mostly because Akira’s imagination can’t quite reach wide enough to imagine how Akechi’s facial features would shift with age, but he looks older in a hazy, vaguely-defined sort of way. Sometimes he’s on the run (from who? Akira’s not sure, that part never really matters), sometimes he just shows up with no particular reason beyond wanting to see Akira again. Those are the daydreams that feel most indulgent, but Akira lets himself have them anyway; in his mind he invites Akechi in, compliant and welcoming in a way that catches Akechi off guard, and when he lingers hesitantly in the doorway Akira has something reassuring and smooth to say that melts all the stress and trepidation from Akechi’s face. 

That’s the one common thread running through all the scenarios his mind idly sketches out: in them, Akira always knows what to say. Even in the more obscure ones - in a tram on a foreign country, Akira meets the familiar eye of a stranger down the end of the carriage; he misfires a digit on a phone number and they reconnect serendipitously like a cliche romance novel - Akira always, somehow, has a perfect speech pre-rolled on his tongue, has miraculously wired in to the ideal combination of syllables and words that will balm the events of the last few years and make Akechi stay. And that’s the thing: Akechi always stays. Even if he feigns needing persuasion, spits out a few charming barbed insults at Akira, in the end he always settles down, says, _okay, Kurusu, I won’t leave again._

And it’s not like he hasn’t considered that Akechi could be here, in this city, because of course he has, because despite everything Akira’s heart is still disgustingly, treacherously idealistic at times. But here, in the flesh, standing in front of him with a goddamn Lawson plastic bag swinging from his hand - it is entirely too much. Akira is blindsided. The easy, silver-tongued charisma he has in all his self-indulgent daydreams is washed away by a tidal wave, and when it recedes he is left with nothing save for the only portion of his brain left intact screaming _say something!!_

“What?” he says. 

Akechi looks unimpressed. At least, Akira thinks he does. His expression is mostly impassive, but as he looks at him Akira’s flatlined brain begins to stir into motion again. He spent a good few months learning to read all the subtext in the minutiae of Akechi’s expressions, and it slowly floods back to him again, like muscle memory - there’s a slight shifting to his gaze that betrays a discomfort laced with nerves, and a tremble in his jaw that could be anger, or something else -

Akechi pushes past him, and Akira reaches out, grasping his wrist before he has time to think about it. The contact makes them both flinch, although Akechi’s reaction is near imperceptible. Akira stares down at his hand as if he can’t believe it didn’t pass right through. “Where are you going?”

Akechi, who had also been staring at Akira’s grip on his arm with a surprise adjacent to anger, looks towards him but doesn’t quite meet his gaze, his mouth a taut line. “None of your business,” he says flatly, and yanks himself free. “Please move out of my way.”

The _please_ is what stings the most. It takes form in the crisp autumn air and physically slaps Akira around the face, and he feels the impersonal detachment of it burning against his skin. “No,” he says, louder than intended. His heartbeat is a cacophony in his own ears, all the cells in his body screaming the same _no_ in time with one another. “No, you don’t -“ 

All the Japanese he’s ever learnt in his life packs up and leaves his memory bank. He scrabbles for something useful to say but all his mind can supply is a desperate _I have been waiting for this moment for years, I never stopped, if you walk away and leave me on this street I will die, I will physically drop dead -_

“Akechi,” he hears Mona say. The two of them both blink down at their feet, before Akechi’s expression twists into something tired. 

“Of _course_ the cat came with you to stalk me all the way to Osaka,” he mutters, his voice like acid. “Why wouldn’t he.”

“He’s not a cat,” Akira says automatically. He blinks. “Wait, what?”

“What,” Akechi returns back.

“We did not _stalk_ you,” Morgana says, haughtily, as if the mere notion offends him deeply. 

“I didn’t - I had no idea you would ever be here,” Akira elaborates helplessly. 

Akechi’s eyebrow quirks ever so slightly. “So you’re telling me that you’ve just happened to run into me outside of a fucking Lawson, in a city of 2 and a half million people, miles from -“ He cuts himself off mid-sentence, glances away, makes a little disgruntled noise. “...Yes, I suppose that would make perfect sense, actually. Of course.”

His gaze remains fixed away from Akira, and his arms are folded around himself so tightly as if they’re a defensive measure, but he doesn’t seem to be trying to walk away. Akira relaxes a little, allows himself to actually breathe as he looks at Akechi properly. He’s a little thinner than he was when Akira knew him, and that’s saying something; he would be bordering on scrawny were it not for the muscles Akira knows hide beneath his clothes. It’s a little concerning. He still wears gloves, Akira realizes with a soft pang, the leather concealing the boniness of his pale wrists. His hair is darker than it used to be, and longer, too, pulled back into a ponytail that whispers down the back of his neck. 

Akechi shifts a little under Akira’s gaze, still looking away. “Can I help you, Kurusu?”

The use of his name feels like a victory. Akira feels a smile pulling at his lips and he lets it happen, feels an idiotic grin bloom over his face. “Have you dyed your hair, or is that just your natural colour?”

Akechi looks at him then, properly, for the first time. His eyes meet Akira’s and his expression hangs somewhere between disbelief and ridicule. “ _That_ is the first thing you decide to ask me?”

“It’s important information,” Akira replies, still grinning stupidly. “I can’t believe I might’ve been missing out on vital Akechi lore all these years.” He has an entire litany of questions he wants to ask him, of course, but for now it’s enough - it’s more than enough, it’s a gift - to watch Akechi’s mouth wrinkle in annoyance. He is alive. He is _alive_ and living under the Osaka sun and Akira has finally found him. 

“I’m glad the years haven’t made you any more intelligent,” Akechi tells him. Morgana leaps onto Akira’s shoulders in one smooth lunge and narrows his little blue eyes at Akechi. 

“They haven’t made _you_ any more polite,” Morgana remarks. 

Akechi’s eyes shift in the shadow of an eye roll, and he makes a move to walk away. Akira’s heart starts thudding in panic, but before he can even say anything Akechi turns back to him. “Well? Come on.”

“What,” Akira says, again, very intelligently. 

Akechi fixes him with that specific look that suggests he is talking to the holder of the lowest IQ in the country. Akira has missed it desperately. “If I have to suffer through a conversation with you, I’m at least doing it inside.

* * *

He follows Akechi to a chain coffee shop a couple of blocks away. They sit in a corner upstairs and Akira orders a coffee he doesn’t particularly want so as not to appear rude. Akechi doesn’t buy anything, just sits across from him and looks at him flatly, completely unforthcoming.

Akira drums his fingers around his coffee cup, semi-nervously, before bravely breaking the waters of conversation. “You didn’t answer me about the hair thing.”

Akechi looks at him silently for a few very long seconds. “It’s dyed,” he finally divulges, “although it’s closer to my natural colour than it used to be.”

Akira nods. “It suits you,” he says, too easily, and grins at Akechi’s flat expression. “What made you dye it? For disguise’s sake?”

There are far more pertinent questions to be asking here, Akira knows. He feels a veritable abyss of them stretch between the two of them. For now, however, he wants to stretch their banal conversation out just a little longer, ignoring the elephant in the room of where he’s been the past four years. Four _years._ He feels electric, an energy buzzing through him right down to his fingertips. 

“Partially, I suppose,” Akechi answers. He looks vaguely awkward, spine straight against the back of the chair, hands in his lap like he doesn’t know where to put them. “In some sense, I needed a change.”

“Like a shoujo heroine cutting her hair,” Akira quips, grinning as Akechi narrows his eyes at that. 

“Maybe you should consider doing the same,” Akechi retorts, eyes pointedly lingering on the mop of hair that still hangs over Akira’s vision. It’s so unprovokedly _catty_ that Akira finds himself beaming in response. 

“Why are you sitting here talking about _hair!”_ Morgana hisses suddenly, and Akira jumps slightly. “How are you alive, Akechi?!”

“Shh,” Akira reprimands him, gently pushing his head back down into the bag. He glances at Akechi, a little sheepishly. “...Well, I guess he has a point.” He doesn’t want Morgana to have a point. Not that he isn’t desperately curious to know what led Akechi here, but some part of him is afraid to unearth the truth; some part of him wants to sit here with his fingers curled pleasantly around his coffee cup, tossing snarky remarks back and forth with Akechi as if nothing ever happened and nobody ever died inside their father’s distorted perception of the world or a well-intentioned prison of an Eden. 

His coffee is beginning to cool.

“I guess,” Akechi echoes, lightly. He crosses his arms. “I’m afraid I have no exciting reveal for you. Your guess as to how I survived is as good as mine.”

Wait, what? “What do you mean?” 

Akechi examines one of his cuticles. “I mean I woke up in a disgusting alley in Shibuya after our good doctor’s Palace apparently deigned to spit me out there. That’s all I have for you.”

Akira stays silent for a moment, taking this in. “So - you remember Maruki,” he says slowly. The knowledge fills him with an odd sense of relief. In the back of his mind he had always held the possibility that the Akechi of that winter wasn’t real, just an illusion crafted from the clay of his imagination. His wishes, he remembers - and acknowledging that now feels oddly embarrassing.

“I remember,” Akechi says, tight-lipped, and with a rush of some muddy emotion Akira wonders if he’s recalling the same thing. “I remember being in your ridiculous cat helicopter -“ Morgana shoots him a look, but doesn’t say anything - “and then.” A pause. “Nothing, before I woke up.”

Akira looks at him. He won’t quite meet Akira’s eyes, but that doesn’t mean much in itself. He wonders if he’s telling the truth. He wants, out of some stubborn principle more than anything else, to believe Akechi, but. 

He supposes that whether he’s lying or not doesn’t really matter, for now. 

“How did you end up in Osaka?” he presses, instead. At this, Akechi looks him in the eye, mouth curling into something on the edge of a smirk.

“By train,” he says. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of this thing called the Shinkansen.”

Him being sarcastic should not elicit the emotions in Akira that it does, especially not now. “Okay, you smartass, why did you come here?”

Akechi’s expression shifts closer to a sneer. “Oh, what, did you think I was going to lounge about waiting for the bowels of Tokyo to regurgitate me back onto your doorstep? I had no reason to stay there,” he says, and his gaze is steady and cold. “There was nothing left for me, and here was as good a place as any other.”

Akira tries not to let Akechi’s derision dig too deep, but it still stings, just a little. He can feel on his tongue the question Akechi boldly circumvented. Saying it aloud feels like a weakness, something pathetic, but Akira’s learnt that sometimes it pays to wear your heart on your sleeve. “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?”

Akechi’s eyebrows raise in an icy parody of pity. “Why would I have done that? What makes you imagine I had any obligation - or, God forbid, desire - to continue tolerating your presence in my life?”

“Hey,” Morgana pipes up, voice simmering, but Akira gently gestures for him to be quiet. He won’t pretend Akechi’s words don’t hurt, because they do, but Akira’s not stupid. He knows Akechi. He has filed away in his brain so many tiny facts about his behaviour, and he’s not naive enough to believe he knows _everything,_ but he knows Akechi, can see through the veneer just far enough to know there’s something else beneath it. 

So he says, through a smirk layered with his old bravado, “What’ve you brought me on this coffee date for, then?”

Akechi rolls his eyes, averts his gaze, but his expression looks marginally less stony. Akira continues, “What are you doing these days, anyway?”

Akechi fixes him with a look. “Are you seriously determined to carry on this asinine conversation?”

“Yes,” Akira returns cheerfully. “Feel free to change the topic if you want. I’m sure you have some Nietzsche quotes you’re dying to unload on someone.” He’s being snarky, but he’s also very aware of the fact that he would sit here listening to Akechi talk about anything at all. Maybe Akechi is aware of that too. God, he kind of hopes not. 

Akechi sighs, and then says, “I work at a library.” Akira must be making a face, because he says, “What? What about that is hard to believe?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Akira says. “But, wow, what a career change.”

“Well, sorry that putting _fake detective slash teenage hired cognition-world assassin_ on your CV doesn’t exactly open many doors,” Akechi snaps, and then continues, as if defending himself, “Working in a library is - nice. Pleasant.”

“High praise,” Akira notes. 

Akechi ignores him. “I like the quiet. For the most part people leave me alone, and I get to get things done without anyone getting in the way.”

“It sounds ideal, then.”

Akechi makes a small, noncommittal noise. “What about you, then? If you aren’t here having dogged my footsteps all the way to Osaka, what are you doing here?” He almost sounds petulant, as if he can’t believe Akira had the audacity to _not_ track him down all the way to Kansai. Akira has missed him _so much._

“I’m just here for a semester,” he explains, finishing the last dregs of his coffee. It wasn’t very good. “It’s like a - half-sandwich year, a work placement with my university course.”

“Illustrious,” Akechi says. “What are you studying?

Over the elated voice in Akira’s brain shouting _he’s asking questions! he maybe cares!,_ Akira tells him, “Social work.”

Akechi makes his unimpressed face at that. “Oh, of course. So glad to see you’ve carried your hero complex all the way into the real world.”

“I have a lot of complexes, but I’m not sure hero is actually one of them,” Akira muses. Akechi looks as though he’s about to let loose a particularly barbed retort when a muffled vibration stirs into life. 

“Shit,” Akechi mutters, fishing his phone out of his pocket. Akira stares. Akechi has a phone, he realises. Akechi is a real, alive person with a mobile phone that - maybe - has contacts on it. A sudden awareness of the whole reality of the situation slaps him giddy, and he barely manages to take in what’s happening until Akechi gets to his feet.

“As invigorating as this conversation is, I have to get going,” he tells him. His expression is unreadable - is he just making up an excuse to leave? Akira doesn’t think so, but is that just wishful thinking?

“The demanding life of a librarian, huh,” he says, just for something to say while his brain catches up with the realisation that Akechi is leaving. 

“Not everyone who works in a library is a librarian, you know,” Akechi says, and then grimaces at his own instant retort. It’s so endearing that Akira finds himself saying, “Give me your number,” before he has time to think about it. 

Akechi hesitates.

“You know I will not take no for an answer,” Akira says. 

Akechi rolls his eyes and holds out his hand. When Akira blinks cluelessly at it, he snaps, “Let me type it in.”

That was easier than expected, Akira thinks somewhat dizzily as he watches Akechi type his real human phone number into Akira’s mobile phone. Akechi drops it back into his hand and Akira instantly presses the call button. 

The screen lights up in Akechi’s hand. He looks at Akira very flatly. 

“Do you really think I wouldn’t suspect you’d given me a fake number?” he says in response. But he didn’t. But he didn’t, he realises wondrously, staring down at his phone. His phone which has the contact information of Goro Akechi. Goro Akechi, alive, living in Osaka and working in a library.

“If you’re satisfied,” Akechi says shortly, “I’m leaving.” And he turns, and in a matter of seconds he’s gone, leaving Akira alone with his heart drumming rhythmically against his chest. ~~~~

* * *

[ **Akira** : hey (18:34pm) ~~~~

it was good to see you again, you know (18:36pm) ~~~~

thanks for actually giving me your real number (18:44pm) ~~~~

do you hang around dotonbori often?? doesn’t really seem like your kind of place (19:21pm) ~~~~

“how presumptuous of you to assume you know what kind of place i like, kurusu, you half-witted imbecile” (19:23pm) ~~~~

what library do you work at? (19:51pm) ~~~~

you know i will try every one in osaka until i find you (19:55pm) ~~~~

ok that wasn’t meant to sound so creepy. not taking it back though (19:55pm) ~~~~

or was the librarian thing a lie after all?? (20:21pm) ] ~~~~

[ **Akechi:** Library worker. (22:34pm) ~~~~

Do you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time? (22:38pm) ] ~~~~

[ **Akira:** sorry, didn’t realise this was such a contentious topic in the librarian community (22:43pm) ~~~~

library worker community (22:44pm) ~~~~

also no, absolutely not (22:45pm) ~~~~

and you didn’t answer my question. i need a name, detective (22:53pm)

i really missed you, you know. im glad you’re alive (12:23am) ] ~~~~

[ **Akechi** : Osaka Municipal Central. (02:57am) ]

~~~~  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to everyone who commented/left kudos on chapter 1.. i owe u my life. fyi i write everything half asleep on my phone so if you see any typos slap them down on my head. my phone corrected kansai to Kansas and i nearly did not notice


End file.
